Jump to playlist

The Lost Outlaw Album is a collection of songs almost lost to history by American Outlaw country artist Hoover, lovingly restored and released by reissue imprint Anthology Recordings.

Willis David Hoover was born in Jackson County, Missouri, and raised across Iowa, where he started his career as a coffee house folk musician during his teens before moving to Nashville in the 60s to pursue his dreams of songwriting. Here he occupied space as part of the original outlaw country music scene alongside names like Kinky Friedman and Waylon Jennings.

Before giving up music altogether, Hoover cut one last album in 1971 at Nashville's Outlaw Headquarters, which never saw the light of day after the master recording was initially lost when the studio shut down. Remarkably, a fan who caught wind of the tapes' disappearance retrieved them from a Nashville dumpster, saving them from certain destruction.

Today, Anthology Records has lovingly compiled the recordings alongside Hoover's lost hit Absolute Zero which featured on the label's beloved 2019 compilation album, Sad About the Times, co-curated by Melbourne's own Mikey Young.

The Lost Outlaw Album is a remarkable addition to the Outlaw country canon, made all the more significant by how close it came to never being heard at all.